Moral Divergence
by eriasu
Summary: She stood, alive, a believer still, and Erik lived too, a Lazarus of flesh and blood. If Lazarus had sung praises to the Lord, Erik had only ever shown such devotion to her. No one should know such love, she thought, twisted into impurity. Christine chooses the scorpion. Leroux.
1. No More Nosegays for Marguerite

It was a lamentable thing that she was her father's daughter. Old Daaé's passed on naiveté ultimately made Erik's fortune. And although he appeared anything but fortunate in the minutes and hours and days that followed, luck was with him. Perhaps he had it by the throat just as he'd held Raoul and, by extension, her.

If she'd never spoken back, if she'd never answered a disembodied voice—

An interrupted train of thought. Nothing more.

"For an instant, you had the elite of Paris in the palm of your fair hand," Erik told her after the barrels of gunpowder had been dumped into the underground lake. "I'd have never chosen a painful death for you."

It was the silence of the _after_ which proved most suffocating. Her choice, she could ignore. Not the silence. It would persist.

"I turned the scorpion, Erik," she said.

"The grasshopper hops jolly high," he muttered, bony fingers drumming an inaudible staccato against his thigh.

"I turned the scorpion," she repeated, hysteria clashing with desperation.

He'd always been a bitter man, his promises dependent on his unstable moods.

"In the palm of your hand," came his near-silent murmur. "There will be no requiem mass. Not for them and not for Erik."

His voice betrayed disbelief and she wondered if he truly thought her capable of—no, not of selfishness for she was selfish indeed as much as anyone desiring peace could be, but of being like him.

For a second, a mere breath, she wished to be such. Erik had achieved so much with bloody hands and blackmail-poisoned words. All her successes were his doing; nothing was hers. Professor Valerius had brought a Swedish country child into respectable society, paving for her a future among gentility, and Erik had molded a chorus girl into the Marguerite all of Paris watched fall.

Gounod's heroine was meant to ascend. How brief her soaring proved.

The Aubusson rug she'd rubbed her knees raw against the night he'd dug her nails into the dead flesh of his face lay like a lifeless, bloated thing. Water from the room of mirrors had ruined the abstract orange sunset. Colorful thread had darkened the same way a drowned man's skin dimmed after being deprived of air for too long. It had been here, on this exact spot, that Erik had proclaimed himself a true Don Juan and cursed her curiosity, unhinged laughter turning to wheezing and ending in combined sobbing.

If Raoul was blue of face and glassy of eyes, she'd go back on her promise. If he'd drowned in the forest of metal or had his heart stopped from the heat before lake water had the chance to clutter his lungs, she would break the glass casing housing Erik's gilded peshkabz and run it down her forearms.

But Raoul coughed and sputtered when carried out. She brushed back his pale, wet hair. Ran a thumb over his upper lip to feel the soft dew of sparse stubble. Lingering, intimate touches he wouldn't recall but she'd cherish.

"The Viscount will lead a good life," came Erik's voice. "His wishes won't be hindered by those of his brother."

There was some meaning to be found behind accented words and heavy breaths. He trembled a little as he spoke, either from exhaustion or sentiment. Those eyes she'd often thought of as yellow, followed her hand and then her fingers as they threaded through Raoul's hair.

"It's unbecoming of one betrothed to throw herself at another man," he said, eerily calm. "You wear my ring, Christine, although it is his proposal you accepted. It matters not now."

"Will you not let me say goodbye?"

"You were to bid him adieu when your sailor boy confessed he'd be departing for the North Pole expedition." A dismissive gesture, a flick of the wrist. "No matter. There's no turning the grasshopper now. The cellars are empty. Erik has no more gunpowder."

He offered the Persian man, Raoul's unfortunate guide, water, holding a glass to his parched lips. His voice—that beautiful voice which at Perros Guirec had sung like a divine presence after The Resurrection of Lazarus hit its last note—spoke a dialect she'd never heard but to which the stranger responded.

"You must leave, my friend," Erik finished in French. "Forget the way down here. Don't ring the bell anymore. The siren will answer if you do, but Erik shall not."

 _Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me shall never die!_

She stood, alive, a believer still, and Erik lived too, a Lazarus of flesh and blood. If Lazarus had sung praises to the Lord, Erik had only ever shown such devotion to her. No one should know such love, she thought, twisted into impurity.

The house on the lake fell into silence. Erik had referred to the murky waters as Avernus in his grim humor—and was it not fitting? Those who entered Hades never left; this was the last she saw of the gallant boy who'd fetched her scarf. Christine did not look when the delirious viscount was taken away, his weight shifted upon the poorly recovered Persian's shoulder.

The brass statuettes, now useless parts of the decorum, sat on the mantle and stared. The grasshopper's mouth remained open as if it had been cursed to forever croak Why not me, why not me, Christine? The scorpion's tail seemed sharper than ever in the dimming light of the oil lamp. She wondered briefly, irrationally, if she were to prick her finger would she wither and pass?

She stayed by the Aubusson rug because she could not move and when Erik returned he dropped to his knees before her. His fingers, cold and spider-like, traced circles around her wrists, mindful of the fresh bruises.

"Erik is very tired," he murmured, not quite looking at her. "Must he restrain you again?"

His free hand lifted, hovering a hairbreadth from her forehead where the blood from her unfortunate attempt at leaving life had dried to a crust.

Please don't talk thus, she wanted to scream. There was a method to his madness, but none that she could decipher.

"I will not try to kill myself, Erik," she promised and felt his breath of relief waft against the tip of her nose.

His ghastly face stayed there, too close to her own, and she thought surely he wouldn't kiss her, no, not he who apologized for the cold which seeped even through his gloves, not Erik who was so unaccustomed to mundane touches that even guiding her by the elbow through the Communards' tunnel made his fingers twitch.

"I will not," she repeated when his silence stretched on. The words felt thick upon her tongue. Like curdled milk, awful but difficult to spit out.

She had no strength left to banish the stubborn accent years of living in France hadn't fully annihilated, much less the energy to crush her skull against the stone floor again. Perhaps tomorrow.

"Very well," he said at last.

He looked like he might keel over as he rose, mask absent and wet clothes clinging to his grotesquely thin figure. A draugr, she thought as a shiver racked her spine, a true draugr. An again-walker with a beating heart.

"Forgive me," he said, stopping halfway to his bed chamber where the words to the Dies Irae hung upon the walls still. "I cannot marry you at the Madeleine. I'm afraid I will burn before reaching the altar. Your God has never been kind to me, but I'll oblige him nonetheless for your sake. Not there, however."

She'd never truly believed his wild vows. Erik promised stars only to bestow diamonds; impressive gifts but trinkets compared to the real thing. His gestures were grand, his words greater, and only seldom did the two meet.

The plain gold band stung like a branding iron and perhaps she was cattle indeed, though of a different kind.


	2. God Shakes the Sullen Sky About

There was only silence in the _after_. Apathy would not come.

Professor Valerius had purchased a mild-mannered bay gelding from a racetrack in the Parisian countryside once. Its wounded hind leg healed, yet it couldn't compete any longer and so, for a fee, the former champion was reduced to pulling a brougham through crowded streets. She remembered the animal's lost eyes most of all. Now that it had won its race, there seemed to be no use to walk forth at all. If it did not run towards a bright ribbon and away from a slaughterhouse—then what was the point? Where had its finish line gone?

Erik was cut from the same cloth. It was like watching a mouse spin around in a circle. The kind thing to do would be to crush its skull with the handle of a broomstick for it would never walk straight again. But he was the one with the strength and tools; as always, she was reduced to the role of silent bystander in a life with enough space for only two.

Little by little, days dragged lingering madness from him and color from her. It would blaze bright sooner or later, she knew, for she'd shattered his vessel of restraint. For now, however, the calm was a harbor in an everlasting storm.

Erik wrote many letters. Oftentimes she would watch from the canopy as his hand flew. Such controlled, graceful flick of the wrist shouldn't translate into crude penmanship where letters bled together, she would think. There was little to reflect upon and if at times Erik brought a candle's flame to words he did not want her to read, she'd muse in her stupor that it was better to burn early on than gather dust upon rich parchment, always awaiting the delivering blow of a letter opener.

"Who is it you're writing to, Erik?"

After the room of mirrors, the little bag of life and death, the smirking brass statuettes—after all of that, she didn't think there could be silence again. Yet here it was, maddening and suffocating, interrupted only briefly by the folding of yet another message.

There would be no wedding at the Madeleine, he'd said, but truly there had to be more than this.

He paused and as he did his hand stilled too. In that position he remained, fingers furling and unfurling. Once, she thought his composition befitted nobility. Some skills were meant to be refined in absence of others. If he stood tall, it was only for his benefit and never appearances.

Those maddening lines of confusion, those pages upon pages of carelessly scribbled secrets, would serve ends she'd never learn of.

"Have I not made you shine?" he said, reclining in his chair.

"You have," she replied.

"No," he interrupted words that were not there. Not on the surface but under her breast, little springtime buds of wonder if not hope. "Erik made you incandescent. An automaton with eyes of glass, you were, but with me you took breath."

"I owe you my voice," she agreed.

His fingers caressed the air as he spoke, modelling the nothingness into a harp to suit his tones. Spider-like and long, they sliced and drifted.

"When I lived in Persia all those years ago, I observed an interesting fact your god-fearing heart would flutter over," he said, voice echoing with not so much longing as reminiscence. "It was never the first wife, not even the second, who knew how to make fortune favor her. She who smiled the prettiest and knelt without being prompted walked away with allowances and jewels. Don't avert your eyes so. You were in the chorus, were you not? Ah, the things those pesky _petit rats_ whisper about once the curtain goes down. Most of them are unfit to wear white."

The Sorelli wore sable during cold months and had emerald pendants to compliment the specks of green in her eyes. Her finger had never known the weight of an engagement ring, expensive or otherwise. Yet it was she who led the life most wives publically shamed yet fantasized about beneath cold sheets after their husbands had departed. Count Philippe would never marry her, all knew, but she did not need his name. Only his patronage.

"It's a fickle type of power," Christine retorted. "Beauty fades."

"Unless one has none to begin with." He laughed then, a terrible sound straight from the diaphragm. It was how she sang, how he taught her to breathe. His voice carried, catching yet always resuming its morbid cadence, until at last he sighed. "How lucky Erik is to have never been burdened with such triviality. Albeit, one might argue, this world of ours is obsessed with this little triviality alone. Not so lucky after all."

"Please don't talk like that. You never answered me."

In the candlelight, he held up two envelops, one already sealed and one awaiting its contents. She didn't know if it was an invitation or merely for show and so her hand paused mid-air, an abortive gesture.

"De Castelot-Barbezac," Christine read, tongue tripping. "I do not know that name."

"Of course you do not," he chided, a teacher having caught their student at their own game. "You are not of the nobility. The T is silent; the R less pronounced."

"Giry," she read off the second envelope. "As in the portress from the rue de Provence? She takes care of the boxes occasionally."

"Wonderfully useful woman," Erik remarked. "She speaks very little, but accomplishes quite a lot. Little Meg Giry with her dark hair and darker eyes, too-long legs and narrow chest, is her daughter. Surely you've heard of her. There briefly was talk between our dear managers that she would usurp La Sorelli."

There he leaned forward some, free hand always dancing and dashing as his voice took a nasal quality.

"Fresh and fine like a twig, she is," he spoke in the voice of Moncharmin. "It's most unfortunate Count Philippe won't look her way, although who is to say of the future. Perhaps one day our prima will finally have use for that dagger she carries."

"Will she?" Christine asked. "Will she be the new prima ballerina?"

"She will not," Erik said with cold finality.

The envelope was sealed with red wax. He used no seal, merely allowing it to dry in an abstract pattern. The letters found refuge in one of the drawers of Erik's mahogany desk.

"She will be as close to an empress as I can make her. This, I promised to her mother. Erik can do more than make soulless girls come alive."

The room seemed to spin around her as he spoke and she rearranged the woolen shawl falling off her shoulders. In the hailstorm of Erik's intricately woven half-truths and recollections made to shock, there was no haven for a troubled mind. He walked too slowly to where she sat and she watched as one of his hands darted behind his back, fingers twitching. The second extended, awaiting hers. She allowed him to take it but it was no better than a dead thing, motionless yet so much warmer than his had ever been.

"The baron is an old oaf," Erik whispered. "He will marry her and she'll have everything. I suppose no young beauty desires an aged cripple, but worse arrangements have been made throughout history. Her future is secure. And so, how good it is that we are not in Persia. She won't have to fake her smiles at all to enjoy prosperity."

"That is very kind of you."

A feather-light touch ran over the plain gold band she wore like a diminutive shackle. Erik remained standing, his gloved hand restraining hers.

"Nothing about your god or this institution called marriage is sacred," he said. "I am not a bastard, but have enjoyed the fate of one. In the Almighty's eyes, Erik is destined for hell as he wears a name that was not given to him in any church."

Her head hurt. A sharp pain behind the right eye had weaseled its way through the front of her skull and now swirled around like a fury without escape.

"Watch how with a handful of words and favors awaiting years to be called in, one who after a short-lived career would have ended up in a wash house, is elevated among common folk. There is no divinity at work here, only arrangement. Oh, she will swear to love and cherish before the altar but it will all be lies. It always is, Christine. Very rarely do people speak the truth in the House of God."

The silver cross nestled between her breasts seemed to burn as he spoke. An irrational part of her wanted to tear it off, press it against Erik's skin and watch if he would blister.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked instead, equally wary and weary, two states that shouldn't coincide. "Please, you know I can't speak in riddles."

"It is all lies," he murmured, "but Erik will not lie to you. If you must take comfort in something, draw it from that simple truth."

The Madeleine or a country run-down church with an altar of moldy wood—Raoul would not have lied in either. Not where God's eye was most watchful and colorful glass mosaics allowed a clear view of the assembly; not even where windows were too grimy for midday sunlight to pierce through. He'd spoken of being disinherited, but caring not a dime about losing both title and income.

She could have been happy with very little. Her mother had been.

"Your father, even with his kind heart, would have given you not to the one who spoke in verses, but one who could assure your future. If I had asked, he would have offered me your hand, Christine." His finger toyed with the gold ring in a blissful moment of silence.

The possible truth remained trapped between her temples, a fury of surprise and questioning. _What if, what if_. How many paths could have there been? Would any of them have been of her own choosing?

"Tomorrow then," Erik concluded.

His touch fled as he resumed his post at the desk. She heard him refill his fountain pen. A new bottle of ink was opened. Red this time, perhaps?

Was this a kindness, she wondered. An odd sort of kindness, but one nonetheless, that to convince her that this is where she would have ended up either way.

No, Erik was not an animal who knew not what to do with a stubborn prey finally caught. In that regard, she'd been wrong. She was the mad mouse running in circles, bashing her head against many walls.

"Will there be a house above ground?" she inquired, not watching the ghost of a man yet still seeing him in her peripheral, the rise and fall of his shoulders as something akin to a chuckle shook his chest.

"Why do you think Erik has been bloodying his fingers penning all this nonsense for the past few days? Ah, no matter how wide one's reach, it can't be exploited without the written word. It is better that way, I suppose." He turned fully towards her, fountain pen resting between thumb and forefinger. "Although the truth is a lovely thing to have, it neither feeds nor warms. Erik can offer you more than pretty lines. Never doubt that."

Erik's truth, she did not need. It was ever more poisonous than his lies.


	3. All Are Tales of Human Failing

She'd known Erik in recklessness and despair; had witnessed his anger morph into melancholy before coming full circle. It was uncertainty that she was unaccustomed to. Erik led. Such was his role. However both of them now simply existed, stuck in what seemed a single moment, despite the parlor longcase clock steadily announcing each passing hour.

The promised tomorrow became the day after, and when it too proved uneventful transformed into 'soon.' Just as days stretched into infinity so did Christine's waking hours.

Without sleep there could be no dreaded tomorrow and no promises to fulfill.

Erik was much the same and in that she took comfort. All of his carefully sealed letters had been sent. He was as listless as she in their dual monotony, but not unhappy. Merely unsure. Long fingers caressed ivory keys at times and abused at others. And she sat, listening to trills no voice could follow; or watched him input notes between margins during a moment's rest.

Of Raoul she couldn't think.

"Stand," he told her during what could have been morning. "Follow." A simple enough scale was played, something her old throat would have emulated with ease.

If before her voice had been his instrument, it now no longer responded to his coaxing. She tried and failed, parched lips fluttering. In a rare moment of physical boldness, Erik had taken her hands in his. It was as much physical contact as he permitted himself. The irony wasn't lost on her–if there indeed was any. Do not recoil, she thought, do not recoil, but she was as cold as him now, in this house so far away from the sun, that it no longer seemed an impossible feat. Cold didn't respond to cold, and neither of them were warm enough to scorch the other.

"Your eyes are wild," he said gently. "You do not sleep."

"I cannot," she whispered.

"Sit," Erik said, and as he rose she went down, taking his place upon the piano bench.

She would sit and stand and come if beckoned; she already did those things. As long as he was gentle she could be well, a mad little thought bounced within her skull. She could find similarities to what life with Raoul could have been like if her mind was to be left free. And if she found none then pretending was a simple enough charade. After all, she'd fooled herself into believing that for her alone the heavens had touched earth once.

When Erik returned, he presented her with a glass of overly sweet wine. Sugary droplets lingered on the rim where shaky hands must have spilled some of the beverage. Christine caught one on the pad of her finger as it raced toward the stem.

"Coca wine," Erik explained, and when she hesitated his hand covered hers and pushed the glass bottoms up.

Down her throat it went, like a cool stream, and she sputtered.

"Will I sleep?" she murmured as the glass left her lips.

"You won't dream," he promised.

Once more, their places were switched. Enveloped in not one but two shawls, she sat upon the canopy as he played. But now he didn't ask for her voice.

"Erik does not need you to sing," she heard him say and only afterwards realized she'd spoken. "He doesn't love you for your voice."

There wasn't much left to love, she thought grimly, but then it didn't really matter for her eyelids were lead and the world an unwelcome sight. And if he caressed her cheek with the back of his cold hand it could have as well been one of the many breezes beneath the opera.

Every other day that followed, she fell asleep with the taste of sugar on her lips. Nighttime was always dark and its light counterpart uneventful. Until a day she walked out, having braided her hair and pinched her cheeks, and Erik accosted her with glasses for the both of them. His wine was much lighter and she found herself frowning.

"Today you wear white," he informed her in a voice that was very nearly tremulous if not for its steeliness.

"Oh," she said.

Her own hand trembled as she reached for the glass he was offering. If oblivion came on a day like this then it could only be welcomed. Erik's formal suit had seen better days; his cuff links sparkled in the low electrical light; and his throat was hidden behind a silver scarf. Odd, little details. She couldn't muster much more.

If he loved her just like this, she caught herself thinking, as a girl of few words, nearly mute and without warmth to spare, then perhaps marriage to him wouldn't be quite so horrible. And she in turn could lose herself entirely. They used to share a friendship, mentor and pupil in equal admiration of one another. Some of that innocence had to have remained.

The pressure on her wrist increased and she realized at last he'd been meaning to retrieve her now-empty glass for a few seconds. Shaking her head in thanks, she turned to go but his grip remained.

"Erik doesn't need your voice," she heard him whisper, striking a chord of remembrance within her. The same proclamation as the evening prior. "Pretty songs and sweet words are but trifles in the end. However, you will fulfill your promise. That he does require."

"My promise," Christine murmured. There'd been so many. Countless promises made and just as many broken. To stay, to avoid the roof, to give her heart to none and wear no ring other than his.

"A living wife for a living viscount." The words were spoken softly, but his sneering tone slashed through the silk of her nerves swiftly and painfully.

Erik kept his hands at his back while her own fidgeted nervously with the pale blue of her skirts. It was almost pitiful, truly, to watch the tension in his shoulders, the tight way his jaw was set, the porcelain of the mask lifting ever so slightly from his lips after each deep breath. He'd been kind to her once, dealing in nothing more than loyalty. A debt she'd failed to repay; it'd been tossed away, just like his ring, that night upon the rooftop with Raoul. But what he'd asked–was now demanding–was something she had every right to refuse. She did not deserve this; neither of them did.

"You will dress now," he told her, retrieving a gold pocket watch. Eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep affixed themselves on the dial, pointedly ignoring her own. "You have an hour."

"What are we to toast?" Her glass had remained full, an ocean of swirling red.

"Our betrothal," Erik answered quickly. "Our marriage."

He drank very little while she swallowed greedily, recognizing the distinct flavor of the sleeping draught he'd been serving her upon the first taste.

The wedding dress was in the same poor state as she'd left it when Christine rummaged around for it. Silent, she sat upon the bed and brought the once-beautiful fabric to her face. She cried. For herself for she would never love and for Erik who would never be loved. Poor Erik who after experiencing warmth was ready to set the world ablaze. Poor Christine for yielding under the fire of his will. Eventually, the coca-flavored wine brought on its trademark stupor. There hadn't been enough to fall asleep, but just the right amount for numbness to set in.

There remained some rouge upon her vanity and she dabbed it on her cheeks absentmindedly. Photographs were fashionable as of late; perhaps Erik would want their wedding commemorated. And just as suddenly she laughed at her foolishness, breath catching and coming out in great wheezes. A man who couldn't abide mirrors wouldn't want any reminder of his face around.

This is what he would have: a bride with a bruised forehead wearing a shredded dress.

Erik pivoted as if shocked when she walked out, fingers threatening to crack the glass display of his pocket watch. She felt his eyes all over her like spiders, crawling, dragging, seeking every crevice to invade as though she were a vessel of cracked porcelain.

"Erik forgot," he muttered, taking in the tattered hem of her wedding dress, the ruined sleeves and missing veil.

"I can't go out like this," Christine said. "There isn't another dress. Not a white one."

"It's of no importance," he cut her off. "Come, Christine." Then once more when she didn't join him, "Come."

There was not a soul beneath the opera, not even a pair of eyes. Was the siren to be their witness while Erik acted as both priest and husband? He did not make her speak vows nor took off her ring only to put it back on in some mock ceremonial gesture. All he demanded was a signature.

"A marriage contract?" She frowned at the stack of papers before her.

"I do have a legal identity," his low voice intoned somewhere above her left ear, as though he were hunched over her. She didn't turn around to confirm or deny it.

He'd been nothing more than a disembodied voice for so long that it was hard still to acknowledge him as a being of flesh. Phantoms didn't build luxurious apartments; true ghosts were occupied with curses rather than money extortion schemes. And real men demanded more than smiles from their wives.

It was something she'd considered with Raoul: a marriage of sanctity as well as formality. His family would have done anything to guarantee a clean way out of any scandal. But there was no ruining Erik's reputation and no material wealth to protect. Not truly at least.

"I do not believe in God's law," he told her as he handed her his fountain pen. "But I do believe in the written word."

"What will this ensure?" They would still live in sin. Her cross would become a gimmick and her beliefs be mocked daily.

He didn't answer, but he didn't need to. She understood. This was everything a quiet church wedding could never be. Being marked as his in the eyes of a god he hated meant nothing. Priests did not intervene when one's rights were oppressed. They would not return a missing wife, should she run. At the very least her name would be tarnished.

Numb, cold and tired, she signed her name in cursive. The Madeleine first, a quiet ceremony within a chapel–all lies and she was becoming a willing sinner.

Exhausted. She was so exhausted. Whatever was supposed to happen after a marriage didn't come to pass. No great declaration of love or promises of happiness. In truth, it was as if though nothing had changed. Were a few words really so binding?

Cool fingers threading through a loose lock of her hair made her jolt.

"You are Erik's wife now," he whispered, tone rising at the very end as if in question. As if he couldn't quite believe it himself and hoped for confirmation.

Perhaps he leaned forward just a little, perhaps he exhaled at the wrong moment, perhaps it was something else entirely, but Christine took a step back and then another and another. If he were to kiss her now she would die. This she knew.

His gaze remained fixed upon her, but she could not hold it, eyes sliding down his slim frame to where his fingers furled and unfurled furiously by his thigh.

"It's early still," she heard him say as he turned away to gather the papers. "Take a bath. Read. Amuse yourself."

Early. Still early. Too early and yet not early enough.

He retreated to his study and she watched the door slam shut. Behind stone walls, the organ whined as its keys were being pounded into obedience.

 _How pretty you will be, Christine_ , Mamma Valerius had laughed on a summer afternoon after she'd wrapped a pale scarf around her head. Almost the same color as her hair it had been, trailing behind her young self as she paraded about the garden for her guardian's pleasure. A false veil for a false bride. And now that she was one in name there'd been nothing for her husband to lift from her features. Did it still make her a wife?

 _Of course, of course, of course_ , the grasshopper and scorpion seemed to croak in unison. The ugly figurines hadn't left their post. Vigilant guardians, they remained to remind her of her choice. Their sneering expressions were too much to handle and she slammed them face down. Bronze did not break, but she tried until the time on the clock grew late.

Thump, thump, thump. Just as when she'd bashed her head against the wall, though the insufferable things didn't bleed. Their laughter grew, chuckling turning into cackling.

If Erik heard her when she mentioned retiring, he made no mention of it.

She did not blow out the candle at her bedside. If Erik did come to her tonight as was his right, she did not want to give him the comfort of darkness. Minutes crawled by in agony–or was it hours? She memorized every pattern of the trompe l'oeil wallpaper covering the adjacent wall. Plump, cheery savages delighted in a festival by a sea of the brightest cerulean. It's at their colorful silks that she stared as the door creaked open and closed in silence.

At the foot of her bed Erik stood, wringing his hands together. In another life, months ago, she would have smiled and reached to console him. But she could do no more than watch him pry the covers from her body. It was an oddly detached experience. She did not die when he touched her, hesitant at first and then more fervent. Either wine or exhaustion numbed her to everything.

"Erik will be good to you," he whispered, fingers trailing along her collarbone.

Society sought to deny that women had any skin other than that of their faces. Yet here were her legs, stomach, chest, all bared and cold. Finally the whispers she'd collected while still in the chorus made sense. If this was all that a man was–a thrusting, panting, creature with wandering hands and breath sour from wine–then it was no wonder that so little girls protested their husbands taking mistresses.

Erik offered no comfort whenever she gasped and so she remained quiet in the aftermath as he spoke words of love into her ear, waiting, hoping to hear anything at all in return. When he cried after receiving naught but silence, she did not seek to reassure him. There was no calming whatever demons thrashed within his heart and no caresses soft enough to make her forget the blood between her thighs.

Perhaps now there could be peace, she thought in the dark. Now that there was nothing left to expect, no unknown variable to fear, they could learn to be content. The day after, she rested her head on his knee as he read in the library and he did not protest when she asked for another dose of the sleeping tonic to cloud her senses.

Erik kissed her shaking hands that night. Perhaps he imagined the small tremors were due to feelings of some kind; perhaps she sought to ignore the effects of the so very sweet drug. There was no telling who the better liar was.

* * *

 _All of you are lovely. Just to answer a little question, yes, this will be a multi-chaptered fic but still rather short. I don't see it going past ten chapters, if I even manage to make it there. I've decided to upload these last two chapters at the same time because they were already sitting on my laptop so why not. I'm upping the rating just in case.  
_


	4. Art Is Long, and Life so Short

It stood to reason that happiness wasn't a material thing. And yet Christine found fragments of it within little things. The last of the blazing wick before being pinched out by cold fingers; the fading bruise around her ring finger where before sat another, greater in value and beloved, and which had left such a cruel mark upon being wrenched away; swirling foam, like a restless shark, at the surface of a glass of champagne or sparkly white laced with liquid sleep.

"Erik," she wondered aloud one evening, tongue loose, lips crimson and glass empty in her lap. "When did you build these apartments?"

Across the drawing room, she saw the blood rush from his knuckles as he gripped his knee nervously.

"I had much time to spare when the Prussians went on their merry crusade." Two long fingers tapped rhythmically against his jutted knee just as he gave a hoarse chuckle. "A fox needs a hole to hide in and Erik dug himself a very deep one."

"A hole," she repeated, pensive.

"A tomb, more likely," he corrected. "Although with you here I have no wish for either of us to repeat Aida's fate."

She put the matter to rest in her mind. Countless had perished, ending their days in common graves with slit throats. She didn't want to hear Erik's account of the bloody conflict that had driven her benefactors away from Paris. Until her last breath, Mamma Valerius had knocked on wood whenever any German dialect was spoken as though the tongue itself was a superstition.

"I will retire," Christine said, rising on shaky legs.

She thought of the beautiful Sorelli who threw her head back as to expose the white column of her throat to Count Philippe in dark corners. Perhaps she could have been happy with a slice of love that involved no engagement. Respectability was hers on paper and it felt smothering.

Such was their dance. She would drink and on nights her wine was darker, stronger, Erik would push the door to her room.

In he walked, the arabesque design of his robes glowing golden in the dim candlelight. Like little waves they twirled and her hazy consciousness followed them to plains unknown; perhaps they led to the bright sea of the wallpaper which contrasted so with the cheery savages, just like a great unpolished beryl with odd flecks.

There was no Madeleine, no formal wedding and no proper mass. Just two signatures and the feeling of his hands on her body during the night.

"The candle," she whispered, but in the corner of her eye he only shook his head.

This was the first night that he didn't put out the light. The flame was weak, waning, but it felt brighter than any sun as his fingers walked over her, undoing fastenings and ribbons, first sliding her nightgown off one shoulder and then getting rid of it entirely. They traveled from her bosom to the quivering tips of her thighs and she thought that this is where he shifts, where he throws away his clothing and climbs on top of her and she endures what all wives must.

"Won't you look at your husband?" his murmur ruffled the hair at her temple and she squeezed her eyes shut.

Behind her eyelids the world was tinted red before darkness took over as on a low sigh Erik disposed of the flame.

He told her once that the only mirror he'd ever allow in his house would be one encased in a frame of dancing cranes. Birds of fidelity, Erik had explained, so whenever she looked upon herself her first thought would be of her vow to him.

But in her mind's eye she twisted the cranes' necks until their windpipes were crushed so as to erase all promises. In that same dream, her wedding ring became a rope of melted gold which she used to tie a noose for all pledges and assurances and obligations.

Nights filled with his ragged breathing and her fluttering heart. Days spent drafting a letter that would never be read. Had she truly lived another way once?

 _How do empresses live_ , she'd begin before striking it out with a shaky hand, wasting enough ink to soak through the paper and stain her vanity.

 _Do empresses walk about freely_ , she'd try again and throw away this new sheet as well.

 _You do not know me personally, but I hope you are happy._

Nothing more, nothing less. This one she didn't crumple, didn't shred to pieces. This one simple sentence of an unfinished letter found home within her drawer under layers of petticoats.

In Erik's house time existed only with the ticking of the clock. It was not days that she counted. If prisoners marked the length of their captivity with notches in stone, hers was defined by the endless circular journey of arrows.

"Is there to be nothing at all?" she asked softly one morning–evening–day, whatever it was. The hours had bled together.

When Erik failed to speak, she fell to her knees. There had to be more. He had promised more. More than this endless cycle of days indistinguishable from nights. More than sugary wine and empty words of love rasped into her ear while her mind swam ever further away. In her despair she clutched his hand, pressing the back of it to her cheek.

She found their roles reversed, her grovelling and him apathetic until at last his fingers threaded through her hair.

"Is the gold around your elegant neck nothing?" he inquired, unstirred.

"But what of walks in the park on Sundays, Erik?" she whispered furiously. "What of a house with a great garden?"

"What of a wife who dares acknowledge her husband?" he mused above her in that snide tone that made her head ache. "What indeed."

Her own words parroted back at her stung more than any insult ever could. She dropped his hand, feeling the cold slip from her cheek. His fingers however had remained entwined in her hair and at once her head was jerked upwards.

"Be a wife, Christine," Erik spoke, and she felt his words crash against her lips. "Be a wife, not a doll," he repeated, "and Erik will be a husband."

That evening she dressed herself in her prettiest blue dress before joining Erik for dinner. She smiled and laughed as a wife ought. She drank her wine till the last drop. And when he came to her room at night she did not pretend he wasn't there, did not avert her eyes or shivered at his fingers digging into her hips.

Minutes and hours and days of drinking ever stronger wine so she could smile before the candle was blown out. This was a lie, but one which Erik savored and upon which she depended.

And he was so kind to her, so gentle and happy. He didn't mind her trembling hands at all and even helped her steady them whenever her drink threatened to spill. She lived on this borrowed time of rest, devoid of violent moods.

Card tricks and baskets of flowers given voice–it was all amusing. She laughed while he kissed her hands during the day and pulled off her clothes at night.

"Eight of clubs," he'd announce, bumping the card against her nose while the sun was high in the sky.

"Beautiful, beautiful Christine," he'd whisper into her flesh after the opera fell silent and his breathing was louder than the longcase clock.

Christine ceased seeking happiness in pretense for it was easier to find at the bottom of a glass he would pour her every night.

Soon, Erik's coffin was deserted and her hidden letter grew in content.

 _Tell me, do empresses pretend?_


	5. Blue, Blue Eyes

Promises were like butterflies in Erik's house. Put on display in great glass casings, embellished and revered. Just as insects were pinned to preserve their fragile beauty so were those countless vows. And she was one of them, was she not? A promise of normalcy, companionship and affection no matter how misguided.

It was maddening to be everything to one man when the wick of her own passion had long burned out.

"Will the siren anger if I venture out?"

Erik looked up at her from his book. Slowly, a hesitant hand came to rest upon her head. Queens must have been crowned with a less gentle touch, yet she didn't deserve even a laurel wreath. This wasn't peace she'd bought with her acceptance of him – merely a facsimile.

"The creature is sated, I believe," Erik spoke gently.

"Then there is no danger in crossing the lake?" she inquired, willing her tone to be one even melody.

He'd been so kind to her these past few weeks. She thought he would never revert to the person he used to be back when they'd been but host and guest. To that gentleness she clung desperately. He was everything. The lock and the door; the warden and prison master; husband and lover in an sacrilegious union.

She herself was no fool. Making notches in soap or bed frame, marking down days until blue eyes met hers once more, was folly. It wasn't something she could help, yet wished furiously to rid herself of.

She'd written something similar in her unsent letter. _I think I must redirect my hope, lest it finally drives me to madness. What of you?_

"A ride around the Bois," Christine said, leaning into his hand. "At nighttime. Just for air, Erik, just for air."

She watched his throat bob as he swallowed and his fingers tightened in her hair. He knew as well as she that they couldn't persist in this state of purgatory. He was no true phantom and neither was she; they didn't belong in a place where time didn't exist.

At last, he nodded and she rested her head on his knee as had become custom.

That evening she dressed quickly. With a ribbon, she tied the folded letter around her upper arm and chose a dress with wide sleeves to cover it fully. Outside her room Erik awaited with a sable coat. She felt every slight tremor in his hands as he helped her put it on, every twitch of his fingers, every hitched breath wheezing past her ear.

Before she could move he'd dug his nails into her shoulders and if not for the fur she'd have winced.

"Promises, promises, promises," he muttered behind her, chin coming to rest in the crook of her neck. "There are so many between us. Isn't that so, Christine?"

"I am your wife, Erik," she murmured. "Truly, fully, entirely."

He laughed, or perhaps snickered. There was no telling as the sound was muffled. At once, she felt one of his hand slide down her arm and then up again. A slow journey where his fingertips whispered against her temples, disturbing wisps of pale hair, over her cheekbones, nose and bloodless lips. All those he traced absentmindedly, as if committing to memory.

"Do not forget your muff," he said, each word a piece of broken glass, before releasing her.

It was seeing Erik outside which terrified her most. For he could be anyone to a passerby. A tall, lean figure beneath a dark cloak with his hat pulled so low that all features were obscured – the physical manifestation of anonymity. But she did not look on from the sidelines. No, it was she, not them, who walked close enough to glimpse the porcelain of his mask where it ended beneath his chin. It was she who felt the pressure of his hand at her elbow, steering as much as gripping.

He did not speak and neither did she. The only sound to break the monotony of clattering hooves as the old draft horse took off was the thumping of Erik's walking stick. Again and again the dull crash echoed throughout the brougham until it had seemingly synced with her heart.

"I suppose I won't be returning to the stage."

The words flew out without a second thought. At the academy many girls had exchanged the crystal of their voices for gold upon their ring fingers. Raoul's wife – the role she'd once cast herself in – couldn't prance around in costumes, delighting others with her talents. The reality of it all came down upon her slowly. She watched Erik from the corner of her eye. He was a man as much as any other and their circumstances were beyond odd.

She thought of contracts and wilful family. Would Raoul have really been able to elope with her?

Did it matter? There was no point in doubting a future that had never come to pass.

"You must learn to be satisfied with an audience of one," Erik spoke lowly, not quite looking at her.

"And you?" she asked.

"I've never had need of any," he said dismissively, almost with disdain as if the mere notion was poison on his tongue. "I was prepared to die with my Don Juan. My work is my own. The only acknowledgement that matters is yours."

She could live without sweet wine and long hours of sleep if he loved her like this, reverently and silently, allowing the occasional gust of wind to fill her lungs. Somewhere far, far away where she could forget her old hopes and acquire new ones. Beneath the opera, Christine knew, she would shatter. Be it at his hands or her own, it didn't matter, but it would happen.

"Erik will be your audience," Erik said softly, resting his hand atop hers and at last there was blissful silence.

"And I yours," she promised, allowing her mind to race along the dimly lit streets. "If we leave, I will be. I swear."

His laugh was an ugly thing. "By God's law or Man's?" he asked, the tapping of his stick picking up with a newly increased cadence. She felt the vibrations in her feet, through the still crisp leather of new boots.

"What?" she whispered. There was some terrible humor to his words which had beckoned back her splitting migraine.

"You keep making promises, Christine," Erik said, his gloved hand covering hers to suppress the first sign of tremors. "But those only matter when one swears upon something truly sacred to them, do you not agree?"

Expectation hung heavy in the air, a curtain of lead threatening to drop. She could barely think, let alone speak.

Oh God, how dry her mouth was.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Erik does not want you to promise out of habit."

Suddenly her thoughts were air, her words dry heaves. Christine pressed her forehead to the cool window of the brougham.

"I am thirsty," she murmured, watching through half-lidded eyes as her breath condensed against the glass.

And then they were back and Erik's voice was a beautiful thing in her right ear, then the left, and finally all around her. She drank the wine he brought, fully aware that it tasted better than the cold winter air she'd hungered for mere hours ago.

Perhaps he spoke, or simply whispered, but she nodded her assent to some new inquiry of his. A kiss to the temple. One against the corner of her lips. How much did she have left to bargain away?

She needed him to be kind.

And he didn't know of the letter she'd dropped on the carriage floor.

Distorted dreams within a hazy reality could be enough. Or she would wither like a flower whose water supply had been contaminated; it would still bloom every spring, but grow increasingly duller. He would have her either way, she knew. It didn't matter whether her cheeks were rosy or sallow, as long as she stayed.

The first year Erik had succeeded in coercing smiles out of her as he kissed her at the border of unconsciousness.

The one after that he gave her a garden and she managed to plant roses with increasingly shaky hands.

During a month fuzzier than most, she woke to bloody sheets, a fever and a distant thought of once wishing for a family.

One night, Christine stopped dreaming of blue eyes. When later on she would try recalling the face they'd belonged to, handsome features wouldn't assemble into a proper face within her mind. All that remained was a vague memory of their owner who had been as beautiful as his unfulfilled promise to her.

Finally, everything was peaceful.


End file.
